Environics Climate Crew

We introduced the plan and walked our employees through it in a series of Town Halls. There was a lot of enthusiasm across our team – and a set of volunteers, who have become the “Environics Climate Crew,” assembled to tackle the first pillar.

We quickly discovered it wasn’t easy to find an approach that seemed effective and meaningful. There are plenty of certification programs, emissions audits, and carbon offsets out there. But as we began to explore them, we weren’t convinced any of them were the right fit for us. We’re a relatively small business – a professional services firm with 50 employees spread across our Toronto headquarters and offices in Ottawa and Calgary. Many of us work remotely much of the time. (We had a flexible work policy long before the pandemic.) So the offerings that might make sense for a large industrial business or a major institution weren’t well suited to us. And we’re not alone: The Government of Canada defines a small business as one with less than 100 employees. In 2019, such businesses represented 69% of the total private labour force and employed 8.4 million individuals in Canada.

To develop an approach that we could pursue with conviction, we decided to engage with Green Economy, a national non-profit accelerating Canada’s transition to a vibrant and inclusive net-zero future. They brought the technical knowledge we were after, as well as experience working with a variety of organizations of different sizes across different industries. We wanted their expert support to pursue a real program of change, and to guide us through a process that would be transparent and true to our goals.

#nofilter – Skies filled with smoke from West Coast wildfires during the Fall of 2020 pictured above

Green Economy Canada Collaboration

Today, we’re announcing that as part of our Environics climate action plan, we have joined Green Economy Canada National Hub – a community composed of organizations pursuing clear sustainability goals and publicly reporting their progress. Over the next year, Environics Research will be guided by the Green Economy Team to measure our environmental footprint, and subsequently reduce it. (Pillar 1 will be our main focus for 2023, and we’ll advance the other two pillars soon after.) During the year ahead, we plan to share our progress and challenges – being clear about what we know for sure and what we don’t (we’re researchers, after all). We hope that, in some small way, it will help others, including smaller enterprises, to take their first step toward meaningful climate action.